Why Your Spotify Premium Isn't Enough: Karen Holmes on Music Rights and Revenue

QSIC co-founders Nick Larkins (Chief Product Officer) and Matt Elsley (CEO) sit down for the origin story. From point-of-sale networking to smart homes to becoming an audio company, they trace the winding road that got QSIC here, how COVID nearly ended it all and then remade it, and why AI is the tailwind they've been building towards for a decade.Before QSICNick and Matt are school mates who reconnected in their mid-20s. Nick's first venture was a point-of-sale networking business, servicing around 300 businesses across Australia. Next came Easy Control, a home automation and smart home installation business. Great idea, bad model: no recurring revenue, and clients kept ripping out the hardware post-install.From Smart Homes to Smart StoresThe automation and digital systems know-how carried straight over from residential to commercial spaces. They started digging into retail and hospitality background music and found zero data behind what anyone was actually playing. Early experiments proved it: higher BPM and louder tracks sped up table turnover in cafes. They even got McDonald's to test kitchen music, ramping tempo with store busyness and shaving 2 seconds off drive-thru times at peak.The Pivot to Retail MediaCharging a utility fee for music was a race to the bottom, so they flipped it: audio stopped being a cost and became a revenue stream through in-store retail media. Transactional data proved the model worked, including an 8% unit volume lift for one milk brand through contextual ad serving. Unlike posters that rely on someone actually complying, digital audio guarantees execution and delivers data in real time.Weathering COVIDBy 2020, QSIC was 40-45 people deep and heavily hospitality-focused, right as lockdowns hit. With 85-90% of clients shut, they adjusted fees to match store status instead of chasing invoices, and that goodwill paid off in loyalty long after doors reopened. The forced downtime became a reset: they rebuilt an experimentation and demand-sensing platform designed to scale to 100,000 stores. QSIC now runs in 30,000 stores and is growing nearly 200% year on year.AI, Infrastructure, and the EdgeAI isn't a threat to the business, it's rocket fuel. A decade of field data plus foundational models at the application layer is exactly the combo they've been waiting for. AI also powers IoT fleet monitoring across tens of thousands of devices, with self-healing code, anomaly detection, and automated alerts doing the heavy lifting. The architecture is swinging back from centralised to edge: smart agents pushed right down to the store layer, so things keep running even when the network doesn't.Time Stamps[00:00:00] – Intro[00:01:18] – Where it all started: The early hustle and first businesses[00:08:24] – Bringing music into retail and shaping the in-store experience[00:12:27] – From background music to retail media: Why measurement changed everything[00:20:00] – COVID hits: The strategic pivots that kept the business moving[00:30:11] – The AI revolution and why edge computing matters for what's next[00:42:18] – Building it right: Infrastructure and execution excellence

In this episode of Q’d Up, host Nikki Wishart and co-host Kim explore the often-overlooked world of Sonic Branding. From the iconic five-note "ba-da-ba-ba-ba" of McDonald’s to the deep, resonant "ta-dum" of Netflix, Sonic Branding acts as a musical fingerprint that allows a brand to be instantly recognisable without a single word or visual logo being present. The hosts discuss the psychological "stickiness" of these sounds, explaining how audio targets the long-term memory to create lasting emotional connections with consumers.

In this episode of Q’d Up, host Nikki Wishart unpacks the powerful story behind one of country music’s most defiant anthems: "Not Ready to Make Nice" by The Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks). Nikki takes us back to 2003, when a single sentence spoken by lead singer Natalie Maines in London ignited a firestorm that nearly incinerated their careers. From radio bans and album burnings to literal death threats, the group faced an unprecedented level of industry exile.

In this episode of Q’d Up, host Ben welcomes Mia Horner, General Manager for Customer Loyalty at Liquorland, to explore the rapidly evolving world of retail media and in-store audio. Moving far past the days of static background "elevator music" and tracks on endless repeat, Mia shares how physical retail stores are using dynamic, AI-enabled audio platforms to completely transform the shopping environment.

In this episode of Q’d Up, host Nikki Wishart sits down with Willow Smith - audio engineer at QSIC, member of the all-female band Lisztomania, and definitely not the daughter of Will Smith. Willow takes us through her fascinating journey from an aspiring marine biologist to a dedicated sound engineer who finds her "happy place" in the precision of post-production and film audio.